MILAGRO, Ecuador, June 24, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - In Ecuador, farmers who bet on cocoa beans rather than bananas, the country's top agricultural export, are cashing in as a global shortage of the main ingredient in chocolate feeds a price bonanza.

Cocoa is now a billion-dollar business in the Andean country, rivalling gold, copper and silver as well as the ubiquitous banana.

Near the Pacific port city of Guayaquil, in a region called Milagro (Miracle), 50-year-old farmer Cergio Lema can scarcely believe his luck.

A few years ago, the price of cocoa "was so low you could only earn enough for the upkeep of the farm," he told AFP as he strolled through his plantation, examining the oblong cocoa pods ripening on his trees.

But in the past two years, poor harvests linked to climate change and disease in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together account for over half of global cocoa output, have whipped global prices into a froth.

Lema's income has more than tripled -- from 100 dollars for a 100-kilo (220 pound) sack of the beans packed inside each pod, to 350 dollars per sack.

Nowadays he dreams about expansion.

"I have the vision of saving some money, taking out a loan, and buying another plot of land," he said.

In 2024, Ecuador's cocoa exports amounted to 3.6 billion dollars, 600 million dollars more than mining.

Between September 2024 and March 2025, the value of cocoa exports surpassed those of bananas, of which Ecuador is the world's top exporter, for the first time in six decades, according to the central bank.

Marco Vasquez used his bonanza to modernize his farm in Los Rios province, in the southwest of the country.

"With the previous prices, it was impossible to invest, but now I've bought more seeds and constructed a small bridge to cross the stream that used to flood the plantations," the 42-year-old told AFP in a telephone call.

- Gangs sniff opportunities -
Ecuador, believed to be the original home of cocoa, is the world's third-largest producer of the so-called "food of the gods," according to its agriculture ministry.

It is also the biggest exporter of fine flavor cocoa, a premium variety prized by chocolate makers for its rich, fruity taste.

But 90 percent of its production is of CCN-51, a genetically modified variety created in the 1980s to resist the bugs behind an outbreak of cocoa swollen shoot virus (CSSV), a disease ravaging crops in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

"The current prosperity is no accident; we are reaping the benefits of years of private investment and research into a resilient variety," said Ivan Ontaneda, president of Ecuadoran cocoa exporters group Anecacao.

African cocoa crops have also been wiped out by heavy rains and extreme drought, both of which experts have linked to climate change.

In December 2024, international cocoa prices hit a record $12,000 per metric ton on the back of the shortages, before falling back to about $8,500 dollars currently.

Anecacao estimates that around 400,000 producers and exporters have benefitted from the price surge.

But the boom has left a bitter taste for some: cocoa growers are growing targets for the extortion gangs that hold businesses to ransom across Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela and other South American countries.

The rush to cash in on high prices also risks reputational damage to Ecuadoran cocoa.

Environmental groups have repeatedly warned of rampant deforestation related to cocoa production.

Despite the complaints, the European Commission in May kept Ecuador off its highly anticipated first list of countries at "high risk" for deforestation.